The Furies

Chapter Six Disguises

Jennifer shook her head. “Teyla, I don’t know. Are you sure about this?” The cup of coffee she’d brought back to her desk was going cold, and the file she’d just opened on her computer was sitting untouched. When Teyla had come in, she’d expected — well, she didn’t quite know what she’d expected. A request for aspirin, maybe. God knew the last few weeks had been one big headache. But not this.

“It is the only way,” Teyla said seriously. “I cannot attack a hive ship with a cruiser. I must persuade Waterlight that Colonel Sheppard is not worth winning the anger of Steelflower, and sway her with the Gift if she will not see reason. For that, I must be able to speak with her as an equal. As a Wraith.”

Jennifer nodded. “I can’t say I love it, but it makes sense,” she said. “I just wish I knew the long-term effects of doing this to you again. If there are any. When we first came up with this procedure — ”

“You assured me before then the procedure is completely safe, and completely reversible,” Teyla said, sounding a little frustrated. “Is that not still true?”

“Yeah, but at the time I thought it was a one-time thing. I didn’t think I’d be turning you into the Michael Jackson of the Pegasus galaxy.” At Teyla’s puzzled look, she winced. “Really famous singer with a lot of plastic surgery. Who died recently, so that was a pretty terrible thing of me to say, actually — ”

“Will you not help me?” Teyla asked. “I do not wish you to do things that you believe to be wrong, but time is limited, and Colonel Sheppard’s life is at stake.”

Jennifer raised her coffee cup to hide her frown. She knew Colonel Sheppard would say he wasn’t worth what she was about to do, but she also knew that it was Teyla’s job to put herself in harm’s way. She was getting used to patching up soldiers so that they could go out and get hurt again the next day, treating their wounds and their symptoms until they’d used their bodies so hard that she had to send them home.

And if she was starting to have doubts about whether that was what she’d taken the Hippocratic Oath in order to do, this wasn’t the moment for them. “All right, then,” she said. “Let’s get busy turning you into a Wraith.”

The anesthetic looked like water as it dripped down the tube, colorless and harmless. But then, vodka looked like water, too, and Jennifer had had enough bad hangovers in college to know that appearances were deceptive. Too many drinks at too many frat parties she’d been way too young for, all in the name of trying to fit in when she was a junior in college at sixteen. If she’d known she’d end up standing here in an alien city in another galaxy about to turn one of her friends green, maybe she wouldn’t have bothered trying so hard to be normal. Maybe she would’ve been friends with guys like Rodney, like Dr. Zelenka, the ones in the anime club, who’d hung around the science hall wearing superhero t-shirts.

It was all too easy to imagine Rodney as he must have been at eighteen, pudgy and unshowered in a faded Batman shirt, and she closed her eyes as pain pricked, sharp as the hypodermic in her hand. She couldn’t afford thoughts like that now, not in surgical scrubs and mask with Teyla unconscious on the operating table. Not with so much at stake.

Jennifer took a deep breath and counted slowly as she exhaled, grounding herself firmly in the present, feeling the weight and pull of her hair fastened into a bun at the base of her skull, the slight pressure of the elastic holding her cap and mask in place. This wasn’t the time for anything else. Not her life outside. Not her feelings. Not even her patient, because you can’t operate on your friend or a five-year-old or a man who looks like your father or a young mother of two. There was only the procedure. Only each precise action in the silence.

It was harder working without Todd’s input, but she had extensive notes and photos from last time. The facial surgery was first, and, like last time, it made Jennifer wish she’d paid more attention during her plastic surgery rotation. She’d done well, but at the time, she’d hated the idea of spending her life doing nose jobs and facelifts instead of actually saving lives. She hadn’t imagined she’d wind up needing the same skills to turn beauty into a beast.

Even without much experience, though, it was simple to find the hairline scars left from last time and re-open the incisions in order to insert the silicone implants that gave Teyla’s brows the bony contours of a Wraith’s. The sensor pits on either side of her nose were trickier, requiring dyed silicone and skin adhesive and some swearing beneath her breath, but by the time Jennifer was finished, they looked the same as last time.

The hand surgeries were more difficult, requiring an hour each to put implants in each finger to lengthen them and more silicone to give her knuckles the bony ridges of a Wraith. The fake feeding slit was a challenge as well, constructed similarly to the nasal pits but ringed by temporary tattoos to simulate lips. But the moments blurred, faded, and while she was dimly conscious of the beeping monitors showing Teyla’s vitals regular and steady, of her own knees and feet that wanted a rest, those things seemed insignificant. Like only her eyes and hands were alive.

While the adhesive on Teyla’s hand set, Jennifer turned her attention to her teeth, using strong dental adhesive to attach the fanged caps. She’d never wanted to be a dentist, either. Too messy, and nobody liked you, a lifetime of bad breath and crying kids. She’d thought about oncology because of her mom, but she hadn’t wanted a lifetime of that many dying patients, either. But surgery — surgery wasn’t about the patient, not while she was in the operating room. It was about fixing a problem, and it was only afterwards that the person became real again.

After the teeth, the rest was easy. She’d worked out the right drugs with Todd’s help last time. The first was designed to engorge and darken her veins, making them stand out black against her skin. The second spread throughout her body quickly, bonding to the melanin in her skin and giving it a greenish cast. Jennifer wasn’t sure how she’d have done the same to someone paler, and was glad she didn’t have to figure that out. The last IV push was the drug to send Teyla’s oil glands into overdrive, making her skin look slick instead of soft.

A glance at the monitor told her the drugs had made Teyla’s blood pressure spike, a known risk. Teyla usually ran somewhere around 110/70, ridiculously healthy, and she wasn’t in an immediately dangerous range now. Even so, Jennifer made a mental note to keep an eye on that.

She stepped back and pulled her mask down, breathing the cooler, drier air with relief. The band of her cap was itching, too; fully back to herself now, back in her own skin, she noticed that as well as her aching back and thirst. Teyla was stable and not likely to wake for at least an hour yet, so Jennifer took a moment to snag a bottle of water and sat down by Teyla’s bedside, her eyes on the monitors.

All that was left was cosmetic, putting in hair extensions and dying Teyla’s hair black, and applying and polishing long, clawed fake fingernails. Not exactly doctor’s work, but Jennifer had done her own experimentation with hair dye and fake French tips in college, and you could find instructions for just about anything on the Internet. You could buy just about anything online, too, like the cat’s eye contact lenses they’d had sent over from Earth last time.

The hair would have to wait until Teyla could sit up, but the fingernails would be easier while she was unconscious. She applied the acrylic nails she’d carefully filed to sharp points and waited for them to set, shaking the bottle of green nail polish. Green-wich Village, the label said. There was probably a college student wearing the same nail polish sitting in a New York coffee shop right now, some girl with Teyla’s eyes who had never heard of the Wraith.

Teyla’s skin was already beginning to change color as Jennifer took her hand and gently stroked color on her thumbnail. Her skin felt smoother, too, and a little cooler, its normal brown changing quickly now to a black-marbled green. The nail polish really was her color, Jennifer had to admit. For a moment she imagined a Wraith queen frowning at bottles of nail polish, trying to choose a shade of green to match her skin. Maybe they did.

Jennifer’s gaze fell back to their hands as her thumb lightly stroked along Teyla’s knuckles, careful of the IV. Her tired eyes made Teyla’s hand blur when she blinked, and it was easy to imagine it bigger, squarer.

She closed her eyes as they started to burn in a way that had nothing to do with fatigue. It was so easy to imagine that they’d just rescued Rodney and she’d found some way to turn him back to a human as he slept. She’d sit by his bedside just like this, holding his hand and waiting for him to wake up and know her. Waiting for everything to be fine.

She knew better. It wasn’t going to be easy to return Rodney to anything like human, if it could be done at all. Whatever she did when they got him back, whatever treatment she tried in her attempt to even keep him alive, it wouldn’t make it like this had never happened. And that was what some part of her wanted, the part that was still a little girl hearing her mother saying Honey, I have cancer, saying in her own small voice But you’ll be okay, right? She remembered curling up in bed that night, closing her eyes and praying she would wake up in the morning and have it all be a dream.

Make it not have happened, she thought, her eyes stinging, but she was too old to believe in magic, and she hadn’t prayed and meant it in a long time. Teyla’s hand was warm and limp under hers, and she tried not to hang onto it tightly enough to smear the drying nail polish. I can’t cry, her mother had always said briskly. I’ll ruin my makeup. She’d worn it to the end, touching up her lipstick in her hospital bed with shaking hands and making a face at her reflection in the compact mirror.

Jennifer startled when Teyla’s hand twitched, then slowly turned in order to curl around her own. She looked up to see Teyla watching her. Teyla’s lips twitched in the closest she could get to a smile. “Do I look that bad?” she asked, voice still a little thick from the anesthesia.

Jennifer straightened her shoulders, trying to find her professional voice. “Everything went just fine,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Jennifer.”

“You look … probably a lot like Rodney looks right now,” Jennifer said, glancing up at the monitor because it was easier than meeting Teyla’s gaze.

“If there is any way,” Teyla said, “you know that we will bring him home.”

“I know,” Jennifer said, but she couldn’t bring herself to add that that wasn’t even going to be the hard part.

Jeannie scanned the tables for familiar faces but, this early, there weren’t many people eating yet. At last she spotted Radek in the far corner, reading something on his laptop as he ate, and made her way over. “Hey, Radek. Mind if I join you?”

He looked up, blinking at her behind his glasses. He definitely had the perpetually startled absentminded genius thing down, reminding her of her favorite physics professor from grad school.

“Please,” Radek replied, nudging the laptop aside as Jeannie sat, arranging her tray. “You have been working on the computers?”

“If you can call it working,” she said, her mouth full of sandwich, and then shrugged, amending that. “Well. I think I’ve made some progress on that problem I mentioned yesterday, the safety protocol he buried in the controls for the underwater lights.”

“Good.” He nodded, spearing pasta with his fork. “And the override of the locking mechanisms coded into the translation program? Have you gone further with that?”

“Not yet. The encryption is — ”

“You do not have to tell me.” He smiled. “Why do anything simply if you can instead make it incredibly complex? That is the way of Rodney McKay.”

Jeannie laughed. “Incomprehensible to mere mortals. I know.” She shook her head, taking another bite of sandwich and wondering what the spicy blue stuff in it was. “How’s the Wraith ship coming along?”

Radek waggled his head from side to side, chewing. “It is coming,” he said. “More slowly than I would like, and more like surgery at times than engineering, but…it progresses.”

“I don’t suppose you can give it a truckload of aspirin and hope for the best?”

“I have considered it.” He returned her smile. “But it will not be much longer, I hope. What is interesting me more at the moment is this,” he said, turning his laptop so that she could see the screen. “It is hard to notice from here — it is a bad angle for our sensors, even when they are working properly with all this ice — but from orbit, see? We have picked up some anomalous energy readings from an island in the southern hemisphere.”

Jeannie pushed her tray to the side, leaning closer. “Wow,” she said appreciatively. “That can’t be anything natural, can it?”

“This galaxy is full of strange natural phenomena, but I think that is a long shot. The power signature is too close to the technology used in the city itself. I am almost certain that whatever we are picking up was made by someone, and very possibly by the Ancients.”

“Those Ancient guys certainly got around.”

“Basically this galaxy was a big laboratory for them,” Radek said. “It could be they were interested in the effects of a colder climate. Although if they seeded a group of humans on this planet, it seems they did not survive.”

“Not much question about why,” Jeannie said. Outside it was sleeting, ice rattling against the windowpanes. “But if they intended this to be a human world — ”

“You would expect to find a Stargate, yes, I am way ahead of you,” Radek said. “That is part of why it is interesting. What would the Ancients put on a planet that didn’t have a Stargate?”

“I don’t know,” Jeannie said. “Unless when the original inhabitants discovered that, big surprise, you can’t farm ice, they moved the Stargate somewhere else? Those things can’t have been exactly cheap and easy to build.”

Radek spread his hands. “Who knows? But I am requesting a flyby this afternoon to get some sensor readings. Come up and take a look?” He shrugged with his eyebrows. “I will not be there, as I must get back to the repairs on the Wraith cruiser, but for you it would be something different than Rodney’s code, at least.”

Jeannie nodded. “Please. I’m telling you, when we get Meredith back …” She couldn’t quite maintain the exasperated tone she was going for.

“When we get Rodney back, he will owe us one,” Radek said.

“For this you need a surgeon, not an engineer,” Radek muttered, trying to get the clumsy fingers of his vacuum suit to pick out the tiny strands of what he supposed was the Wraith cruiser’s neural network so that he could splice them. Not electrical cables, but the biological equivalent, they were slippery with the mucous that coated them. And it did not help having to work in the equivalent of big, sloppy mittens. But until the hull breaches in this section were fully sealed, he had to work in a vacuum suit.

This breach was only about ten centimeters long, perhaps made when a piece of superheated shrapnel had sliced through the ship’s skin. If that were the case, the edges should have been charred. Instead, they were pinkish white, thick and webby.

His radio clicked, and Colonel Carter spoke in his ear. “Dr. Zelenka, how’s it going?”

“It is going,” Radek said. He did not look up from the tiny strands in his hands. “And it is fascinating. You should see. I think the ship has begun to heal itself.”

“Come again?”

“The ship is healing itself,” Radek repeated, putting aside the strands. He might as well talk first. “The hull breaches are not so large as they were at first. The small one aft and port has already closed, though the skin is very thin there and you can see where it was.”

“They do that?” Carter sounded excited.

“To a certain extent at least,” Radek said. “What I am doing is splicing and reconnecting the bioelectrical systems, much as Carson does when he does surgery on a wound. But the ship, like a patient, is already healing itself and will do so to a certain extent whether we intervene or not. It is better if we do, I think, just as it is better that Carson set a bone right.”

“That’s incredibly nifty,” Carter said. “I wish I could come up and take a look.”

She couldn’t, of course. With him up here, Carter and Kusanagi were working on the Hammond’s systems. “You would find it fascinating, I think,” Radek said.

“Anyway, I was going to tell you that Dr. Keller and Teyla are on their way up to you. You have the forward sections repressurized?”

Radek nodded even though he knew she could not see him. Habit. “Everything is repressurized except the port drive sections and the ventral landing array. I do not know what can be done about that. The bays that hold the landing gear are open to space with their outer doors entirely gone. But fortunately they are sealable to withstand vacuum. However, there is no landing gear. Teyla must not try to land on a planet.”

“Tell her that,” Carter said.

“I will,” he replied. He tried for the fortieth time to push his glasses up on his nose, an impossible task since his glasses were inside his helmet and his mitted fingers were outside. “I am connecting tissues, but I cannot initialize any systems nor make much sense of the controls. Some of them are designed for ease of use, but the diagnostics seem to involve the same kind of telepathic interface that the guidance systems do. Perhaps Teyla can make sense of them.”

“She’ll be there in a few minutes,” Carter said.

“Then I will come out of the port drive section,” Radek said. And get out of this suit, he added to himself. While he was not particularly claustrophobic and the suit itself did not bother him, the clumsiness did. He went methodically into the next chamber, which they were using as an airlock, and patiently waited while it pressurized. It seemed to take much longer than one of their airlocks did, five to seven minutes, but there was no doubt that it worked. By the time he had removed the vacuum suit and neatly stored it, all systems inactive, and opened the door to the section beyond, Dr. Keller and Teyla had already come aboard.

Dr. Keller looked a little nervous, glancing around at the dark and seamed walls as though expecting a hull breach any moment. Or perhaps it was just that the Wraith ship was disconcerting.

Though not nearly as disconcerting as Teyla. She turned, and Radek’s breath caught in his throat.

She was no taller than he, but she seemed to fill the chamber entirely, green tinted skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones, sensory slits to either side of her nose flaring slightly. Long black hair caught up in black combs fell to her waist, and a tight bodice of dark emerald material embroidered with black clung to the contours of her body. A long black coat was the same length as her divided skirts, which fell in wide folds to tightly laced leather boots. She lifted her chin and gave him a smile that penetrated to the bone, for all that Radek saw the artifice of it.

What these nuances might mean in Wraith culture he didn’t know, but he knew what they meant in his, every trick of posture and stance meant to convey dominance and power. And oh yes, unmistakable allure. For all that his own personal tastes did not run that way, Radek could see that it was well done. If the Wraith were anything like many men of his acquaintance, they would be lining up to kiss Teyla’s feet.

Teyla smiled, and this time her face lit like a delighted girl who has pulled off something she was not certain of, which only made the contrast still more intriguing. “Does it work?”

“It works splendidly, my dear,” Radek said, coming forward and taking her hands like a partner in a dance, looking her up and down. “I should be trembling in terror.”

“I thought,” she said, glancing down at the dark emerald bodice, “about how we think of color. Skin tones are innocent, but darker versions of those colors are…”

“Are sex.” Radek nodded. “Very clever. And the green does look well on you.” He smiled. “It suits your complexion?”

“I hoped it would.” Teyla retrieved her hands gently. “Now let us see if the ship will fly.”

“You cannot use the landing gear,” Radek said, following her toward the control room. “Because it is not there. And I have nothing to replace it with. So you must not land on a planet. Other than that, the unhealed breaches are in the port drive section, which hopefully you will not need to enter. If you do, there is a suit in the airlock with nearly six hours of air in the tank.”

“I hope I will not need to,” Teyla said. She stepped up to the command podium, its few lights blinking fitfully amber, sliding her hands into the grips, her eyes closing. For a moment Radek was forcibly reminded of John, of the way he looked in the chair interface. There was that same expression of concentration and transport.

The main viewscreen came to life, yellow letters scrolling up the side of a heads up display of curving lines that it took Radek a moment to interpret as a map of their solar system. Deep within the ship there was an almost subsonic purr, the main engines coming online. His hands flew over his laptop and its sensors. Yes, that was it. Main power. A mist was rising from vents near the floor, the ship’s ventilation systems restoring what they must interpret as a dangerously dry atmosphere.

Dr. Keller shivered.

“Are you all right?” Radek asked quietly, his eyes still on Teyla who swayed slightly, her head tilted back.

“I’m fine,” Keller said. She frowned. “But she shouldn’t be up yet. The cosmetic surgery is completed, but I’d be more comfortable if she waited a day before she exerted herself. She’s only been out of anesthesia about ten hours.”

Radek shrugged. “We have time constraints.”

“I know.” Keller pursed her lips. “That’s why I’m not putting a hold on this.” She let out a sigh. “It’s purely cosmetic. She can’t actually use that feeding mouth on her hand to feed. It doesn’t connect to anything. And any kind of careful examination will show that her lymphatic system isn’t Wraith.”

“If she is subject to that kind of examination, she will already be caught,” Radek said.

“I know that too.” Keller shook her head. “Fortunately, her telepathy is real and natural. She’s going to have to rely on that.”

“That, and sheer balls,” Radek said. He smiled, looking at the expression on Teyla’s face, the slight sway of her body in time with the ship’s rumble, skirts whispering. “Fortunately, she has plenty of that.”

Steelflower drifted in shiptrance, the cruiser ready and eager beneath her hands. It was relieved, soothed. It had been frightened, alone in space, injured, its people dead. Now there was a queen, and her hands were on it. Her mind was strong and clear, and she spoke to it. There and here, she said. Now and again. It would serve her. Masterless, it had limped in a decaying orbit, hardly caring to repair itself. Now it must. She willed it, and it would please her.

She gave it coordinates, her hands steady on the controls, asked if it were capable. Its eagerness was like a quiver through its systems. It would do as its queen desired. It was born to do so.

“I am ready to go,” Teyla said, sliding her hands out of the grips and turning around.

“If you are certain,” Radek began.

“I am certain,” she said, “Go on. All will be well.”

He looked as though he had other things he wanted to say, but he did not, just gave her a quirky sideways smile as he followed Dr. Keller out. “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” she said, and turned back to the command console. A deep breath. It was not done yet, not too late to stop this. But if she did…

No, Teyla thought. It was too late. She was Steelflower, and now she must dig deep, find the core within her, the fragile, tangled strands of her ancestry that held the power. A Wraith Queen stood among her foremothers. Steelflower was of the lineage of Night, or so Guide had named her when he had given her the name and likeness of a young queen lost long ago. But it was not her real lineage, that precious link to the past that the Wraith so valued, kinship and genetic variation in one. For the first time she wondered who she had been, that queen whose son had done unspeakable experiments on humans, the one whose son created her Gift, mingling his own DNA with that of his captives.

Once, long ago, when she had first learned of her Gift, she had dreamed of an Atlantis overrun by Wraith who saluted her as their queen, and now, half caught in shiptrance, she saw it again, blades bending before her, hair flowing down like water. ‘Osprey queens are always the most beautiful.’ She had dreamed true before when she had dreamed of her Gift. Osprey, she thought. The white bird, the white ghost, drifting insubstantial as mist through the shadowed woods… Wraith. Was that what they had meant, once? Once, when long ago they were hunted? Was there one who moved like fog, hiding her presence in clouds that sent shivers running up the spine?

Beneath her hands the ship quivered, ready and waiting. *Go*, she said, and saw the hyperspace window open before them, needing no viewscreens or monitors. Her hands in the control grips, she could see what the ship saw, her touch giving her access to all its data, quick as thought. *Go*, she said, and they went.